Commentary: Stairway to health

This paper 1 contributes to the expanding body of work examining point of decision making and physical activity promotion. Consistent with the current public health recommendations for physical activity, individuals should be encouraged to ‘accumulate’ physical activity throughout the day. 2 Accumulating short bouts of activity throughout the day (Lifestyle Activity) may lead to the accrual of suggested levels of energy expenditure. 3,4 Lifestyle activity has been shown to enhance fitness, improve cardiovascular risk profiles, and help with weight management. 4–6 One opportunity for accumulating appropriate levels of physical activity, is to encourage stair use in lieu of riding escalators, moving walkways, or elevators. In his classic paper Brownell et al. 7 showed that a sign placed between stairs and an escalator could successfully encourage commuters to walk up the stairs instead of riding the escalator in an urban subway station. Since then, there have been several other studies, which have found that signs could be used to promote stair use in malls, 8 health care facilties, 9